Written by
Victor Hugo |
("Vous êtes singulier.")
{MARION DELORME, Act I., June, 1829, played 1831.}
MARION (smiling.) You're strange, and yet I love you thus.
DIDIER. You love me?
Beware, nor with light lips utter that word.
You love me!—know you what it is to love
With love that is the life-blood in one's veins,
The vital air we breathe, a love long-smothered,
Smouldering in silence, kindling, burning, blazing,
And purifying in its growth the soul.
A love that from the heart eats every passion
But its sole self; love without hope or limit,
Deep love that will outlast all happiness;
Speak, speak; is such the love you bear me?
MARION. Truly.
DIDIER. Ha! but you do not know how I love you!
The day that first I saw you, the dark world
Grew shining, for your eyes lighted my gloom.
Since then, all things have changed; to me you are
Some brightest, unknown creature from the skies.
This irksome life, 'gainst which my heart rebelled,
Seems almost fair and pleasant; for, alas!
Till I knew you wandering, alone, oppressed,
I wept and struggled, I had never loved.
FANNY KEMBLE-BUTLER.
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Written by
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist's chair,
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears,
Louder than with speech they pray,
What am I? companion; say.
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates,
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;—
Is to his friend a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared, repeats;
What himself confessed, records;
Sentences him in his words,
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.
Yet shine for ever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state,
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea's edge.
It is there for benefit,
It is there for purging light,
There for purifying storms,
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean,
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there's no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tam, or isle forgot,
But justice journeying in the sphere
Daily stoops to harbor there.
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Written by
Philip Larkin |
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
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Written by
Isaac Watts |
The promises of the covenant of grace.
Isa. 55:1,2; Zech. 13:1; Mic. 7:19; Ezek. 36:25, etc.
In vain we lavish out our lives
To gather empty wind;
The choicest blessings earth can yield
Will starve a hungry mind.
Come, and the Lord shall feed our souls
With more substantial meat,
With such as saints in glory love,
With such as angels eat.
Our God will every want supply,
And fill our hearts with peace;
He gives by cov'nant and by oath
The riches of his grace.
Come, and he'll cleanse our spotted souls,
And wash away our stains
In the dear fountain that his Son
Poured from his dying veins.
[Our guilt shall vanish all away,
Though black as hell before;
Our sins shall sink beneath the sea,
And shall be found no more.
And, lest pollution should o'erspread
Our inward powers again,
His Spirit shall bedew our souls,
Like purifying rain.]
Our heart, that flinty, stubborn thing,
That terrors cannot move,
That fears no threat'nings of his wrath,
Shall be dissolved by love.
Or he can take the flint away
That would not be refined;
And from the treasures of his grace
Bestow a softer mind.
There shall his sacred Spirit dwell,
And deep engrave his law,
And every motion of our souls
To swift obedience draw.
Thus will he pour salvation down,
And we shall render praise;
We the dear people of his love,
And he our God of grace.
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Written by
Isaac Watts |
Baptism.
Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:38.
'Twas the commission of our Lord,
"Go teach the nations, and baptize:"
The nations have received the word
Since he ascended to the skies.
He sits upon th' eternal hills,
With grace and pardon in his hands;
And sends his cov'nant with the seals,
To bless the distant British lands.
"Repent, and be baptized," he saith,
For the remission of your sins:"
And thus our sense assists our faith,
And shows us what his gospel means.
Our souls he washes in his blood,
As water makes the body clean;
And the good Spirit from our God
Descends like purifying rain.
Thus we engage ourselves to thee,
And seal our cov'nant with the Lord;
O may the great eternal Three
In heav'n our solemn vows record!
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